Let's Be Winners By Mistake
by dotRHEA
Summary: "I feel like I've been taking on all the damage." Leigha remembers travelling to an island east of the sun and west of the moon for this boy. She just doesn't ever remember letting him keep her heart when his was so filled with cages and knives and steel loyalty to leave any illusion of the space she once filled there.


wooohooo, I just had to upload this plot bunny.

The chapter count is probably going to be around 5 but I dont know. I'll write when and what I want to write.

* * *

It started out all as a thought that shouldn't have ever been said out loud.

They're lying sprawled out on his bed, his giant brown storybook lying between them when they spot a picture of a girl with flowers braided into her hair and a giant white bear beside her.

She doesn't tell him- doesn't tell anyone, about the jolt of familiarity that surges through her system as they read along. Steadily ignoring the immense longing and pulling sensation in her veins as she runs her fingers over each illustration that decorate every page. It's all quickly tucked away the moment they begin to surface and it's that very thought that bubbles and festers and escapes before she even has a chance to grab a hold of it.

"Maybe we're all stories," her eyes gloss over, locking onto the page with the candlelight secrets and frosted betrayal.

Henry's face lights up like the fourth of July when he sees the look of her face-

And he too, doesn't tell her or anyone that it's the same look that Regina wears when she thinks she's alone and her hands long for the ring that has long been promised and given but never kissed with an I do-

And he's staring at her with that bewildered enchanted look in his eyes and it's what he says next that doom the both of them until the clock tower begins to tick once again.

"Sigrid?"

Her eyes widen at the name as if there's something blossoming inside of her; like it's there just waiting for the huge leap that won't be made without a hard push. Her mouth opens and closes like a fish and for a fractured second, Henry wonders if she would be the first to remember her old life as well.

But his mom is there- at his door as if summoned by some unforeseen force (- she calls it _motherhood_, Henry rolls his eyes) and she's wearing that age old displeased look on her face as if that was the only thing her facial muscles could work her face into. Her eyes trail over from their neighbour's daughter to him almost in disappointment and its then that Henry can pinpoint the slightest twitch of her lip signalling her annoyance.

"Leigha, I think it's time for you to go home."

The younger boy could feel the change in the older girl then, watches as she tears her eyes away from his book without a moment's hesitation and just nods.

She leaves without even saying goodbye, shuts the door with a soft slam and closes her curtains so Henry can't see whether or not the lights are still on in her room- or even if they're on in her house the whole week after.

The girl doesn't ever come over after that night.

Henry feels almost as if Regina loves taking away everything that's ever made him happy in favour of getting her own satisfaction. It's the first time he's ever thought this way and the first time that doubting his mother doesn't leave a sour taste in his mouth.

It's also the first time the Evil Queen sees the book and the first time she seizes it and doesn't give it back until a week of Henry not speaking to her in his defiance.

But it's not too soon after that does Leigha start jumping down from tree tops and asking him more of his book of fairy tales during recess and sometimes after school.

There's a welcome change in her eyes, like she's been having a great day her whole entire life or something and Henry can't exactly tell where to start. But he likes this new impulsive change in his neighbor- he ignores the fact that the first time she jumped him, he saw Sigrid instead of Leigha and from thereafter _keeps seeing the girl from the fairy tale instead of his bland _bland _neighbour_.

But this new Leigha is the first person he sees who outwardly tries to defy Regina without her knowing and no way is Henry going to let this chance go.

It's a start of an operation that Henry has yet to name and when Leigha starts comparing people to their fairy tale alter egos with him; he finds himself wishing for Sigrid to end up with a happy ending with her white bear too.

* * *

Leigha Snow is the town's resident riddle.

With her eyes constantly downcast and a docile first nature, it's almost near impossible to approach her casually. She says next to nothing during class, has no looks or actual presence to appreciate; she isn't outstanding in any way, shape, or form- and it's almost as if she has no personality.

A perfect wallflower that she was.

But as he does everyone, Henry notices her first.

He sees her walking home alone one day, frantically trying to find her keys in that _nonfrantic _almost zombie-like way of hers when he slips and falls out of his tree and plows right into her.

The boy remembers hearing the funniest noise ever and he starts making it a mission to tackle her every chance he gets.

Soon, the girl finds herself having dinner in the mayor's empty house and hanging out with her son on weekends- sometimes even tutoring him on his math and English homework. The lesson's are almost always all monotone and listless and he gets as much out of them as he does at school and it's when his attention wanders that the fun part of Leigha actually appears. It starts out as a poke and a prode before they find themselves chasing each other around the house for what would seem like hours before they'll realize the mess they've made.

She'll clean up like a madman before her quiet side resurfaces; she'll be screaming and sweating and just outright filled with static electricity till the very second Regina walks through the front door where she fizzes out and returns to being docile and submissive.

It's almost entertaining to watch but Henry knows better.

It's when that fun side seems to consume her entire being does everyone else seem to notice her because suddenly its _that quiet girl in our second block psych class is climbing that tree __and jumping the mayor's kid again_ and _I think Leigha's building a bee rocket in the backyard _that he hears when he passes the high school a few days after she stops avoiding him._  
_

However its attention that goes short-lived when the purple haze engulfs them all.

And suddenly Leigha knows why Sigrid constantly looked like her eyes were marbles of wanderlust touched with glazes of subdued betrayal. Knows why she went with the bear in place of her pretty pretty little sister instead of staying at home and waiting for a life of luxury.

Leigha knows the tale of the polar bear and the mortal girl with all her heart and soul because in one life- _her_ life- she's lived it, is still living it. And the memories all spin inside her like glass whirlpools as every little detail comes back to her all at once.

And really, never in her whole life has she felt more alone as she did that moment when she looked over her spot on top of Storybrooke's library and saw the raving mass of people below.

Because everyone else had someone to run to- everyone had family, true loves, pets, friends, comrades, _someone_ to grieve this curse over with.

And here she was- the girl that lusted for a different kind of adventure and the girl who in turn was so filled with disappointment and grief for no one was there to hold their arms out for her to run into.

Leigha stared and stared and _stared-_ played with her fingers nervously and remembers with tears in her eyes of a warm body sleeping beside her and a castle in a land far far away. She remembers his fingers sprayed across her naked belly and could still hear his cold voice whispering empty promises in her ear.

She remembers how her stomach churned uncomfortably as she read her tale in Henry's book and remembers wishing that her happy ending was as definite and defined as everyone else's like _Leigha _had imagined it to be and not like the ripped and torn pages that went blatantly ignored and shunned.

She remembers fleeing to a land crying her heart out and remembering the sweet sweet sensation of forgetting filling her lungs.

And its with a heavy heart that Leigha almost wishes as she flees from the scene that she never would have remembered the face that stared back at her midst the candlelight that night.

Just as she wished she had never went to the castleland that was second star to the east of the sun and west of the moon- the land where an immortal boy reigned over with his loyal lost boy alongside him.

She remembers cages and lies and knives and wishes that she didn't have to remember as she runs far and fast.

She runs and runs and runs until she faints on the forest floor and wakes up to her cursed family all around her.

Her heart breaks as she lets herself be embraced by this suddenly unfamiliar crowd of strangers and tries not to let herself wish that someone else had found her in their place.

Because the day that she said aloud her wish to see Bear again was the day Henry returned from never Neverland.

And with him brought along a whole entourage of boys she didn't think she had to see again.

And among them the one boy who let her once fiery heart die out with the candlelight.


End file.
